NFL Player’s Mom Released From Prison: Here’s What Lies in Store for Them

Amid troubling sports news — ranging from the Missouri University racism scandal to the DUI arrest of Ohio State quarterback’s J.T. Barrett this week — is this bright spot: NFL player Demaryius Thomas’s joy upon learning that his mother would be a free woman after serving 15 years in federal prison for drug trafficking.

“She called me and was like, ‘I’m going home,’” Thomas, a receiver for the Broncos, told KUSA after mom Katina Smith’s release from a halfway house on Monday. When her son was in the sixth grade, Smith was arrested for being part of a cocaine ring with Thomas’s grandmother, who remains incarcerated. “My auntie went to go pick her up,” said Demaryius Thomas. “It was exciting and I was happy for her.”

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Smith was one of 46 nonviolent drug offenders to have sentences commuted by President Obama recently. And though Thomas had hoped his mom would be able to attend his game on Sunday — which would have been her first time seeing him play football in person — he learned upon her release that she would not be allowed to travel for 60 days. So for now, she’ll watch at home with relatives on TV, which still sounded okay to the athlete.

“To be able to be with family, with my sisters and nephew and nieces — it’s amazing,” Thomas, 28, said. “I’ll call her after the game; I don’t have to wait for her to call me.”

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Thomas recalled several years ago what it was like for him the day police raided his Georgia home to make the arrests. “They busted into the house when we were getting ready to go to school,’’ he told the New York Post. “The only thing I remember is my mother asking them if she could walk us to the bus for the last time.’’ Thomas was then shuttled between various drug-addled homes before winding up with his aunt, Shirley Brown, and Baptist minister uncle, James Brown, who gave him both religious and personal direction. Thomas remained connected with his mother over the years, eventually developing a ritual in which they would speak and pray over the phone together before each game he played.

Thomas posted this photo of his mother on Facebook this week, with the caption, “My everything.” (Photo: Facebook)

It’s that mother-son relationship that could make all the difference in how rocky or smooth the reunion between the two will actually be, explains Steve Lanza, executive director of the Connecticut-based Family ReEntry, which runs counseling, education, and advocacy programs for people leaving the criminal justice system.

“It’s very complex, and every case is very different,” Lanza tells Yahoo Parenting about the mix of emotions children will feel about parents released after long prison stays. “The quality of the preexisting relationship between child and parent — as well as what the relationship was like during the time of incarceration — is a factor [in how it all plays out]. Studies have shown that children do better, in general, when they have had maintained quality contact with the incarcerated parent.”

While Thomas’s long-distance relationship with his mother took a while to start up, there was a strong bond once it happened. “We didn’t talk that much after she went to jail,” Thomas once told NFL News. “The only time I’d talk to them was when my stepdaddy would take me to go see them. Once I got to college, we talked about all of the things that happened. She apologized for all of it, explained everything, and we moved forward.”

Still, while outsiders are now seeing Thomas’s happiness and excitement about his mother’s release from prison, there may be a lot more going on for both of them under the surface. “In general, being away from a child’s life for 15 years is a long time, and there may be a host of feelings — such as grief, loss, and sadness — over their hopes and dreams and everything that was missed,” Lanza says. “So there are often multiple layers to the reconnecting — sometimes even anger or a sense of betrayal toward the incarcerated person for leaving the child, and that’s a normal reaction.”

There is often a “honeymoon period” after a person’s prison release, and “a wanting to scoop them up into your life,” on each side, Lanza explains. “Reconnection is a very powerful elation, and it could wind up being very smooth [for Thomas].”

Also a big factor in how reunifications go, he says, is how the child has fared in his or her parent’s absence — and Thomas’s success is bound to be in their favor. “[Her arrest] could have actually compelled him to be successful, either on a conscious or unconscious level,” Lanza says.

Deborah Jiang-Stein, founder of the unPrison Project, which helps incarcerated women build life skills for successful releases, has witnessed many family visiting days, and agrees the feelings are a complex, push-pull mix. “They’re full of love and thrilled to be reunited, but you can also see the anger on their faces,” the advocate and author of the memoir Prison Baby tells Yahoo Parenting. “So I can only imagine that from [Thomas’s] perspective, whether he acknowledges it or not, there will be some resentment and apprehension. He doesn’t really know her. ‘Who is this woman?’” But being so public, she says, likely makes it difficult for Thomas to let any of those feelings show.

There also may be some jealousy, Jiang-Stein says, between the mother and the aunt and uncle, as they were the ones who got to raise her son. “And I’m guessing he might feel torn between them all,” she says, adding that she’s a big fan of counseling and support groups when it comes to helping families make these transitions.

Lanza agrees. “I think talking about how it was for both parent and child is helpful,” he says, “and, as a general rule, going slowly is advised — especially with parents of younger children — rather than jumping right back in, despite [a mom or dad] being eager to be the parent they never were, or to return to being the parent they had been.”

Thomas has publicly acknowledged that he expects a rush of feelings once he and his mother finally see each other again. “I know it’ll be emotional,” he said. “I’m sure I’ll break down and start crying — and she will, too.”

(Top photo of Thomas: Helen Richardson/Getty Images)

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